


Dungeons, Dragons & Dumbledore's Army

by tinyporcelainehorses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Canon Compliant, Characters Play Dungeons & Dragons, Crushes, Denial of Feelings, Dungeons & Dragons References, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26232847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyporcelainehorses/pseuds/tinyporcelainehorses
Summary: Once a week in their sixth year, a few of the members of Dumbledore's Army get together to play Dungeons & Dragons.  Unfortunately, some of their romantic attachments are starting to have an effect on the game.Written for the Spice Up The Archives Challenge on HPFanfictalk.com.
Relationships: Dean Thomas/Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14





	Dungeons, Dragons & Dumbledore's Army

**Author's Note:**

> I've never played second edition (which I believe is what they would have been playing in 1996-1997?), so there's probably a few rules inaccuracies, if anyone particularly cares about that.

“… and with that, the six bold adventurers descend to the next level of the Mad Mage’s dungeon.” Dean Thomas tapped his wand, and the large stretch of gridded parchment before them changed, shifted: new corridors stretched out from a central atrium. Behind the wooden screen he had spent long weeks painting, he shuffled through various figures, eventually placing a motley crew of old wizard’s chess men, brightly coloured toy monsters, and a few strangely unmoving muggle models around the central room. “As you enter, you find a female figure tied to the stone pillar, twenty feet away from the staircase. Cultists skulk in from the shadows, brandishing strange blades, and one is already before the woman, whose golden hair flows like a banner with a single black streak running through it…”

“Lady Ellington,” breathed Hermione, without even looking at the neat stacks of notes she kept next to her character sheet.

“Dean, I’m going to draw my sword,” Harry said. Ron was nodding, egging him on. “We can’t just let them…”

“What if it’s _not_ Lady Ellington?” asked Seamus, reaching out a hand to stop Harry. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the doppelgangers last week?” Harry sighed, and had to admit he had a point. “I’m not going to just trust someone who _looks_ like Lady Ellington,” Seamus continued.

“Okay, okay,” Harry said. “Maybe I’ll cast detect evil, and then…”

“I still don’t believe you guys let them get me,” Neville said, sitting to one side of the table. His character sheet sat uselessly, still folded over. “It’s no fun being dead and having my corpse carried around in Hermione’s magic bag-“

“Bag of holding,” Hermione automatically said under her breath.

“Can’t you guys hurry up and bring me back?” He was carefully stacking his dice, starting with the twenty sided one, getting smaller as he went upwards. It was his fifth attempt.

“I’m trying, alright?” Harry said. “I know the resurrection spell already to bring you back-“

“Raise dead,” said Hermione, not looking up. The boys ignored her.

“- we just need more diamonds to cast it. I promise I’m working on it,” he said, and he frowned. It wasn’t fair that Neville had to just sit on the side and watch. Again.

“I think being dead sounds nice,” said Luna. The entire table paused for a moment and looked at her. She was shading in the drawings all over her character sheet, and she smiled. “What?” She asked. “You get to take a break on the other planes, get to watch your friends mourning and bringing you back…” She sucked on her quill for a moment. “I hope I die this week.”

Ron shook his head slowly, as if trying to forget what Luna had said. “Look, guys,” he said, “it doesn’t matter if she’s secretly a dobblewobbler or not-“ Hermione sighed, and shot him a filthy look. “What I’m _saying_ ,” said Ron, “is that she’s tied up. Even if she’s evil we can deal with her later, _I_ say we take out the guys with the knives and then see what’s up.” He turned to Dean. “I go into my rage,” he said.

Groans echoed around the table. Harry rubbed at his temples. _Come on,_ he told himself. _Your scar doesn’t actually hurt. You’re just tired of Ron falling for yet another obvious trap_. “Dean,” he said, “wait, maybe just let me cast detect evil first, see what’s going on…”

“Sorry, man,” said Dean, “he’s said it. _And_ you said you were drawing your sword. I’m going to need you all to roll for initiative now and get ready to fight. Harry, you can always cast detect evil on your turn…”

“Yes,” said Hermione acidly, “Harry will end up going last _again_ , and then he can cast detect evil at the end of the round once whatever’s tied to that post has already eaten Ron. I’m sure that will be very helpful.”

“Now hang on, Hermione…” Ron began, and for a moment there was the very real risk of a fight breaking out – and not just in Dean’s Dungeon. Harry couldn’t help thinking that Hermione and Ron’s discussions about strategy had got more than a little tense since Ron had started dating Lavender, but there wouldn’t be any point in trying to talk to them about it. Better they got this all out of their system about the proper way to kill ogres, or whatever other terrible things Dean had in store for them this week, than the long silences and terse remarks in the common room. But while at first it had seemed like it was healthy for them to have an outlet in the weekly game, it seemed to be preventing the arguments away from the table less and less as the weeks went by.

Luckily for everyone, Ginny chose that moment to burst into the empty classroom like a cannon ball, sending Neville’s dice skittering onto the floor and Harry’s stomach lurching in a way he still didn’t feel like he quite understood. “I haven’t missed too much, have I?” she asked, slinging a bag across the floor into the corner and pulling up a chair. “Sorry, I swear that whenever he gives detention, Snape sets that clock in his classroom half an hour slow when you’re not looking, just so he can squeeze an extra few sharpened quills out of whatever unfortunate victim he has this week…” She leaned over and gave Dean a kiss on the cheek – Ron pointedly averted his eyes – before sitting down and waving her wand to pull a crumpled character sheet out of her bag.

Harry waited for Dean to say something, but the only sounds were the squeak of Luna’s chair as she fidgeted, and the sad clicking of Neville rebuilding his dice tower. “What’s happening?” Ginny asked, casting an eye over the mess of figures on the board ahead of them.

Dean continued not to say anything, and Harry suppressed a twinge of annoyance. “We’re getting ready to fight,” said Ron eagerly. Hermione sighed.

“ _Cool_ ,” said Ginny. “Bagsy getting first crack at the…” she looked puzzled at the variety of game pieces, some moving, some not. “Chocolate frog card of Morganna?” She said.

“No, wait, that’s Lady Ellington-“ Harry said.

“Allegedly,” added Seamus.

“Who?” Ginny asked, making Hermione put her head down in her hands. Neville moved to tell her, but she waved him away. “On second thoughts,” she said, “who cares? Dean, I’m going to use my enchanted daggers.”

* * *

It was, in fact, Lady Ellington.

Unfortunately, they discovered this after Ron, who had _finally_ started to listen to some of their words of caution, decided to _test_ if it was Lady Ellington, by the use of his two-handed great axe.

Lord Ellington would not be happy, not unless Harry could manage to find that stash of diamonds before they left the dungeon – and _then_ how long was it going to be before Trevor The Tremendous, Neville’s admittedly rather ineffectual bard, was back in the game? Dean had barely managed to finish the fight and wrap up the session, but the real battle was beginning across the table. Ron and Hermione’s argument first blossomed as muttered remarks while Hermione threw a fireball into the cultists, growing with time to a low, quiet background rumble as Seamus and Luna had to hatch an unlikely plan to haul Ron out of yet another pit trap. Once Dean was packing figures away, telling everyone to level up for next week, Hermione was too focused on throwing pointed barbs at Ron to ask her usual questions about whether she could learn a spell she’d found in an obscure issue of _Dragon_ magazine that she’d had imported from America at great expense.

By the time they were climbing the stairs back up to Gryffindor tower, it had escalated into a full-blown row, and Harry had mysteriously discovered that he had a book he needed to check out of the library for his potions essay for Slughorn, just so that he didn’t have to hear any more debates on the finer points of Ron’s character build, and exactly _why_ his last feat had been a sub-optimal choice, or on Hermione’s capacity to suck the fun out of everything. But once he was in bed a little later that night, thinking back over the session and lamenting his inability to save Lady Ellington, he found that what he _really_ kept coming back to was Ginny’s lateness.

It’s not that he thought it was her _fault_ , not really. Harry knew he had no room to criticize anyone for standing up to Snape, and it wasn’t as though he were in the habit of being fair when he gave out detentions anyway. But Dean hadn’t said anything at all, and that was what really stung. When _he’d_ shown up half an hour late last month because of his meeting with Dumbledore, Dean had given him a lecture that would have done Oliver Wood proud, _and_ his +1 sword of mighty smiting had been taken from him by burly hobgoblins. Harry sighed. _That_ was why he didn’t like Dean dating Ginny, he told himself firmly. He just didn’t treat her fairly. It had to be that.

Right?

**Author's Note:**

> I initially planned a much more in depth exploration of what classes everyone was, but it didn't fit the narrative organically. For anyone curious:
> 
> Harry is a paladin (for his saving people thing.)  
> Seamus is a fighter.  
> Ron is a barbarian.  
> Ginny is a rogue.  
> Luna is a Druid.  
> Neville is a bard.  
> And Hermione is primarily a wizard, but took several levels in an obscure prestige class, a single level of monk for access to a feat, and has spawned a seventeen page thread on a bulletin board that she can only contribute to during the holidays when she's home about the exact character build she's trying and what does and does not work. The entire forum is in awe of her.


End file.
